Hello all, my wife and I are hopefully going to get a new house in southern ohio that has a 1.5 acre spring-fed pond and a .4 acre pond separated by about 15 ft of land (we were wanting to connect them) on the property that is about 60 years old. The problem is, it only looks to be at most 4-5 ft deep or less throughout the whole pond. I have looked all over the internet to find information about how to make a pond deeper and have had little success. I have read that it is easiest/cheapest to build up vs dig deeper, but I am not sure if this will be possible. I am wondering what the cheapest route to make the pond minimum 8 ft deep in about 25% or more of the pond area would be? Would it be possible to do this with the water still in it or would it have to be drained? I was also wondering if it was even possible to drain a spring-fed pond to accomplish this, or would it just fill back up? Any help would be greatly appreciated because bass fishing is VERY important to my wife and I haha, thanks!

I can't say what will be cheaper, but whoever you get, make sure they know what they are doing. If the pond was dug in sand, and a clay liner was placed and packed, if you dig the clay out, the pond won't hold water anymore.

Costs will also depend on how far the removed dirt has to be moved. You can get a large pump, pump the pond down, dig a deep hole, funnel the water to it, keep pumping it out, and dig around it using an excavator.

Don't drain at all and have a dragline come in and dig it deeper. No matter how it is done, I'd get a written contract specifying how deep the pond will be, and how much of it will be that deep, specifying the existing water level for a baseline to measure from.